An increasing trend in marketing is to host a party to promote your product. Innovative marketers use a party atmosphere to attract a crowd that might otherwise be indifferent or turned off by more traditional uses of marketing dollars, under a thinly veiled ad campaign.
Moral? Sure, why not? It’s a party after all, so if the people don’t want to buy your stuff, at least they still enjoy themselves, so you’re not really misleading anyone. They hung out, caroused, socialized, networked, etc. In other words, they got what they came for.
Effective? Hmmm…now there is the great question. While parties seem like an inexpensive and direct use of ad dollars, the price tag can actually get fairly out of control fairly quickly. I’m hosting a book release party for my book on Tuesday, and the expenses keep adding up. First there is the fee charged by the bar. I would have thought that you’re bringing the bar a lot of customers that would normally not have walked through the door that night, and so they should be comping you a lot of free drinks, but to my surprise, that is not only not the case, it is the opposite. Some bars wanted to charge $600 per hour. They explained there is security, extra bartenders, stocking and supplies, liability, overhead, etc. etc. Not only do you have to pay them to have the opportunity to bring all your friends to spend money in their establishment, but you have to guarantee that your friends will spend. Most bars will have a minimum, say, $2,000, that if your party doesn’t spend on drinks and food, you have to cover the difference.
Then there is the marketing of your own party. Graphic design of your flyer? $150. Printing and distribution, even if you do it yourself? $100. Invitations and advertising the event? You can use your Facebook page, eVite, and a variety of other free options, but that limits you to your circle of friends. Appetizers and hors d’ouvres? $250. No, the bar won’t comp those, either.
It adds up, not to mention all the hours you have to put in.
All for a book on which I might make $1.50 per sale as the author. No wonder there are so many starving writers out there.
So, is it worth it? I’ll let you know on Wednesday…
About Scott Cooney
We have used a similar idea with our Dallas design center with mixed results. The Dallas design center is located in North Dallas in the very easy to reach JPMorgan Building on the Dallas Tollway. We can hold about 200 people.
What we do is offer the space to networking events in the late afternoon or morning breakfast hour.
We don’t charge for the space or food so it saves organizers a lot of money. Wine and beer are allowed but it is BYOB.
We do screen the groups we let use the space – it needs to be a good fit for us – and we do ask that we can introduce ourselves to the group and explain what the design center is – basically a living display catalog of promotional items which we sell.
Other than that we just let people network. It is a good way to introduce our services to a large group of people.
Other Ecopreneurist that have their own space might want to try the same idea. As Scott mentions most people expect to pay for rooms large enough to meet or network in. Giving a free space gives you a chance to attract perspective clients.
More on the design center at http://proformagreen.com/designcenter.shtml